I am asking because I know people from both sides:
- People who discourage it: usually talk about how the beggars might spend their money on, how they might be lying, How donating to them will encourage them to keep begging and how they should be looking for a job instead (My commentary: finding a job is impossible for them this days, matter of fact there is literally hundreds, if not thousands of articles online talking about how hard and impossible it had become).
- People who encourage it: to be honest here, they usually talk only about religious reasons.
(Note: I know that the overview about both sides are highly unbalanced, but I preferred to keep it limited to my personal experiences rather than expanding it from myself, as I intentionally not looking for theories and objective logic, rather I am looking at people reasons and opinions as this is highly subjective matter.)
Anyone got any thoughts about this?
So something like “begging person” or “beggarly person”? I guess I can see where you’re coming from. I’ve never heard people talking like that though, so it might not be as universal to western society as you think.
Personally, if you called me a German, a furry or a vegetarian, I wouldn’t mind, even though none of these attributes encompass my entire existence. I guess the difference is that being a beggar carries a negative connotation, but I’m not sure that saying the same thing using slightly different phrasing really makes any appreciable difference.
Why are you so insistent to use “beg”?
“Someone asking for donations” maintains their dignity and communicates the point clearly…
Ok…
But we don’t call people what we would like to be called, we don’t set the minimum of respect for everyone else
If didn’t have a home, job, or food, you might be less willing to be dehumanized.
The privileged are usually the least sensitive to that.
Like, I’m 6’4", if someone that’s 6’6" walked up and said “Hey shorty, what’s up”. I won’t give a single fuck.
If I was a 5’2" man, I might be offended, and if I said a 5’2 man had to be ok with it because I was, I’d be a jackass.
That’s literally preschool level empathy, and it’s depressing so many people here never learned that
You’re being very condescending here. “Someone asking for donations” does not really communicate what is meant here. You’re asking for tap dancing around the subject and that phrase is almost meaningless. If you said “homeless person asking for donations” I would agree that is better.
It really doesn’t though, in my opinion. If you talk about “someone asking for donations”, I’d think of a volunteer collecting money for the local animal shelter. So if you actually wanted to communicate clearly, you’d have to go for something like “a person, typically a homeless one, who lives by asking for money or food”. That’s literally just the Oxford definition for “beggar” though. If you put that in the title of this question, it probably wouldn’t even fit.
Firstly, I don’t think that “shorty” is a good comparison, as that’s an unambiguous (if mild) insult.
Secondly, it’s not like anyone here is talking to any particular person calling them a beggar. If someone who was talking to me just called me “the German” instead of my name, yes, that might be a bit reductive and potentially rude. But if someone goes on Lemmy to ask “Why do Germans drive so fast on the Autobahn?”, that’s an entirely different thing. In that context it’s simply a word that clearly conveys a meaning without having to use an entire sentence to explain it.